by Glen Duncan
“I was sitting on the toilet and I noticed this ant crawling around on the floor. Okay, don’t step on it. But by the time I’d got up and washed my hands and looked at myself in the mirror and gone on various fantastic mental journeys I’d forgotten about it—weirdly until just the split second before I stepped on it, when I kind of half saw it but it was too late to avoid.”
Augustus had seen photographs of Selina as a child. One in particular stuck, her maybe five years old on a white porch in a pale blue sundress, half-smiling half-frowning; he imagined picking her up, feeling the fidgety life of her, the skinny legs and little rib cage. He had an image of her now talking very seriously and calmly to their own future daughter, explaining why something was wrong.
“It didn’t die. When I lifted my foot up there it was, still running around, seemingly fine. I was such a moron, I got it onto my finger and tried to kiss it—and swallowed it!”
He looked up from the paper and laughed but in his peripheral vision caught the word “Atrocities.”
“You can imagine the state that put me into—What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“What is it?”
Too late. This was the downside of approximate telepathy. Augustus felt the goodness of the moment—the secret chandelier-lit bar rocking on the city’s dark water, the whiskey’s smoky amber, her mood of indulgence—teeter, then fall. What the fuck did he open the newspaper for?
“Show me,” she said.
“Leave it.”
Alleged U.S. Atrocities at My Lai.
“Give it here.”
“Goddamn it.”
He relinquished the paper and leaned back in his seat.
Augustus twitches and opens his eyes, knows that for perhaps five or ten seconds he’s been asleep. His legs are still resting on the chair, Harper still sits facing him. For a moment there’s free fall through the horror of a squandered opportunity but Harper’s slight smile says no, this conversation was coming to an end anyway, don’t give yourself a hard time. Says too he knows that’s no comfort. How can it be?
“Do you know the movie Soldier Blue?” Harper asks.
There are erratic flares of clairvoyance: Augustus senses activity outside the room, looks at the door, tries to open his ears. Another part of his brain drags up because it has no choice his memory of Soldier Blue. He and Selina went with a group of friends for whom the purpose of seeing a film was so you could make the definitive pronouncement on it as soon as you were out the auditorium doors. It drove Selina crazy. She used to cover her ears until they were clear of the crowds and there was no chance of her overhearing someone begin, I thought it was kinda… Yet they’d suffered their crowd that night, having sensed this was a movie they shouldn’t see as a couple alone. Augustus would’ve been happier not seeing it all, but the controversy had made it a moral obligation.
“Yeah, I saw it,” he says. There had been unmentionable group recognition that Candice Bergen looked a little like Selina.
“I’ll tell you what that movie did,” Harper says, stretching. “It put Godlessness onscreen for the first time. I’m not talking about the behavior of the cavalry. I’m talking about the sun and the clear blue sky. It’s not that a woman’s raped and has her breasts cut off, it’s that she’s raped and has her breasts cut off in beautiful broad Technicolor daylight. Remember how blue and empty that sky is above the village?”
To his surprise Augustus does remember. At the time he’d thought not of the Christian God but the Indians’ Great Spirit, also rendered nonexistent by the film’s brilliant sunlight and aquamarine sky.
“This is the modern story,” Harper says. “You look up and no one’s there. Have you noticed what a lot of torture movies there are now? No, wait, you don’t go to the movies.”
Again because he can’t help it Augustus searches and finds vague concession: increasingly film posters promise hopeless suffering, usually in a single word—Saw. Hostel. Captivity.
“I pointed this out the other day to someone in your position. He said: ‘If they knew what was really going on they wouldn’t make stupid movies.’ Don’t you think that’s completely wrong?”
Augustus is still registering a disturbance on the ether from beyond the room. He can’t stop imagining the guards, voluptuous after lunch, step by step descending into the requisite state of roving irritation. They don’t need giddiness now boredom’s set in.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“It’s completely wrong,” Harper says. “The movies are coming because we know what’s going on. We have knowledge we don’t want, so we send it to the movies. Hollywood’s the transformation chamber where unpleasant truths get turned into consumable fictions. You know what the top priority for the administration should be right now?”
Augustus can’t concentrate. A hardwired defense mechanism stops him fully replaying his own footage. He gets fragments: the thick porous nose and too-small nostrils of the guard without the mustache; a thread hanging from the seam of a truncheon; the mustached one selecting an angle for a blow with a slight tilt of his head—which last brings nausea and a shock of pity for himself and the unique treasure of his life they’re despoiling, like a rape.
“The top priority should be getting the conspiracy 9/11 story out as a movie. Are you LIHOP or MIHOP, by the way?”
“What?”
“Do you subscribe to the theory that the government Let It Happen On Purpose, or the theory that the government Made It Happen On Purpose?”
The will to acronym goes on, LIHOP, MIHOP, the impatience to get a handle on things. (Plus IHOP, the pancake chain not surprisingly asserts itself.) For Augustus acronyms had their negligible share in the disgust that had spilled over into action.
“Let,” he says.
“Okay. Smart money. We need a movie that delivers the strongest version of the conspiracy theory right now. The conspiracy theory says, Look: neocon America wants global dominance, which means control of oil territories and the superlative weaponization of space. For the first you need a pretext for invading key oil countries and for the second massive Congress-approved funding, which you won’t get unless something terrible comes along to change the spending mindset.”
“‘A catastrophic and catalyzing event,’” Augustus says.
Harper raises his eyebrows. “Is that from something?”
There’s a peak in Augustus’s certainty of movement outside the cell door, a hallucination of the wall bulging inward as if it’s thin rubber and a fat man’s leaning on it. For so long now he’s wanted to wrap his arms round himself but the cuffs prevent him. Instead he presses his hands against his chest. It’s some comfort. Vestigial, from holding a teddy…and the teddy used to be a breast…. All these things we know about ourselves. It’s like standing in the middle of a depressing crowd. Your life has a quota of comfort you burn through not knowing you’re doing it. Shshsh. Don’t cry. There there. It’s okay. Hush. Then one day it’s gone.
“Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” Augustus says, though until he opened his mouth he thought he was going to scream. “A document put out by the Project for the New American Century a year before 9/11. Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Podhoretz, Libby, Perle, you know the people. Twenty-five founding members half of whom are in with the big three defense contractors.”
“See?” Harper says. “We could’ve cowritten the script. The script’s there. Nerdy Goldblum engineer to get us through the anti-physics of the towers’ collapse and an idealistic young female journalist Jennifer Connelly they try to silence but can’t. FAA whistleblower I go against type with Sam Jackson. Gene Hack-man in the Rumsfeld role. Who’s not going to see it?”
Quoting the PNAC document and pronouncing the familiar names has made it worse for Augustus, reminds him facts are a lifestyle option. Exasperated with Jesus, Pilate barked out: What is truth? American teenagers know: The truth is whatever. Not that he cares about the facts either. Since he quit journalism he only knows what he knows thr
ough Elise’s insistence. The United States could have carried on racking up atrocities till doomsday and he wouldn’t have stirred. It’s no surprise to him what any government does, least of all his own. He spent a year recording American-funded massacre in El Salvador. He’d gone there in the hope moral outrage would fill the gap left by Selina. It didn’t.
“Thing is get the information out as entertainment,” Harper says. “Conspiracy theory’s doomed if it’s been preempted by a brilliant conspiracy theory movie.”
With a quivering effort Augustus says: “Facts are already coming out.”
“That’s my point. They’re late with the movie. They’re on it with Rendition, thank God. Nothing’s going to protect extraordinary rendition like Rendition.”
The door opens and the mustached guard puts his head around it.
“Yeah,” Harper says. “Okay.”
You think you’re already as afraid as you can be. You think you’re filled with fear. Then you do fill, flood, choke. There can’t be any more. You can’t support any more fear. But there will and must be more.
The guard enters followed by his colleague holding a box unit with a length of wire and a plug, a fistful of extensions that end in connection clips. So many because some are faulty, like Christmas tree lights. Already Augustus is hunting frantically in himself for somewhere to hide. You close your eyes and open them hoping you won’t be there any more. With them closed it seems so feasible.
The guards betray the canteen’s torpor but begin the business of lifting him and reattaching his wrists to the hook. Their odor of sweat, canvas, fried food and tobacco has been replenished. Leave the chair, Harper says. Which would allow Augustus to stand if it wasn’t for the condition of his feet. The left heel he can put a fraction on. The outside edge of his right foot another fraction. The rest has to go into his arms where the blood’s already starting to pack. It’s loud and dark red inside himself where he’s busy with the problem not of getting out of his body but of making himself so small within it that surface events will be far-off weather. Find a buried gland or dead lymph node and think yourself into it. But electricity. To seek out Jonah even in the belly of the whale.
“Please don’t,” Augustus hears himself say, very quietly.
“Something,” Harper says, standing up. To consider, he means, to chew on. Single words do a lot of work between them now. Augustus turns through ninety degrees, has to be turned back by the mustached guard. “You read the testimonies of people who’ve survived torture,” Harper says, “they’re affectless. They tell you what was done to them but never what it did to them. Why is that?” The guard tweaks the cable to correct Augustus’s spin, steps back, makes a “stay” gesture, then turns and mooches over to his colleague, who’s setting up the electrodes. Augustus is left face-to-face with Harper. Yes, I can look at you, no dissonance, no conflict. It’s Augustus who shuts his eyes again, throws the minute version of himself back into the red-lit labyrinths of his body. He still has his appendix. Visualize it, it’ll let you in.
“The historian’s truism is that the only thing you can do with atrocity is chronicle it,” Harper says. “Question is is there a psychological parallel in the individual? I think the torturee can’t bring language to it because language humanizes by definition. To talk about atrocity is to make it less atrocious. Conrad knew this, which is why Kurtz’s rites remain ‘unspeakable.’ You speak the thing you allow it in; you allow it in you allow for its understanding; you allow for its understanding you allow for its forgiveness, and that the victim—unless he’s a Christlike prodigy—has to refuse. So he never speaks beyond the affectless event. Shocks were applied to my genitals and mouth. He leaves his soul out of it because let in the soul’s duties are more than he can bear. What do you think?”
The girl comes back later that afternoon, or he hallucinates she does. The hours have contained marvels. He knows he’s got up several times with purposes, lost track, found his way back to the camp-bed and the damp covers. This is the confusion you don’t want if you’re dying. There’s no one to ask but he’s asked anyway for clarity before he goes. Just so he knows it’s happening.
“Sorry,” she says, standing over him. “Saw you through the window. What’s happened?”
So he had heard knocking. He’s on the floor near the stove. There was a project that got away from him. The fire’s out.
“Nothing,” he says. “I was doing something. I don’t know.”
“You’d best get back in bed,” she says, getting down on her haunches next to him. She smells of the day’s wet weather and the big leather jacket. Also something strawberry-flavored. “I got you some stuff.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“Sorry. I got you a bandage and disinfectant.”
“What time is it?”
“Dunno. Five maybe. Should’ve kept that going. It’s freezing in here.” The fire. His bit of floor’s floating ice, tilts when he moves. “Y’all right there?” Her hands don’t touch but superintend him hauling himself upright against the stove. She rises with him. Her smell’s a startling intrusion by the fresh outside world, real time. He imagines the croft’s interior as a snow globe. But who is the old black man in there, Mommy?
She sees his stick lying nearby, grabs it and offers it to him. For a moment when he feels its head in his hand, things cohere—but have come gently apart again by the time he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. He can’t believe she’s standing there. She wants something. What? It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is he hasn’t got it. With the landscape it’s just been him and it, two parallel phenomena, no interference. He sits trying to find the most succinct and least ambiguous dismissal. Go away. Doesn’t sound like you mean it. Get the fuck away from me right now.
He finds he’s lying down on his side with his knees drawn up. Everything has a whispering pixilated quality.
“You’re pissed off. I shouldna come. Sorry.”
“Something’s supposed to happen. This is that story. It won’t.”
Not sure whether he said that aloud but there’s her small cold face trying to unpack something so presumably he did. The visible effort of the not very bright. One hand clutches the mouth of her bag shut. She’s the type for terminally broken zippers. There’s a thing she does when her thinking dead-ends, flicks her head as if to get her fringe out of her eyes. She moves on quickly from these failures, pretends they never happened, though every time she looks back there they are in her wake.
“Let me get the fire goin at least,” she says. “You’re gonnie catch pneumonia. Here.” From the shoulder bag a paper bag bearing the pharmacist’s green cross. Green someone’ll have decided to connote however distantly healing plants. Commercial design’s endless refinement of basic drivers. Which was one of the things that led to the disgust that spilled into action. He used to try the stupid experiment of trying to get through a single day without seeing an advertisement.
“What do you want?” he says.
“Nothing. I just thought…You know, you could do with the stuff. There’s all sorts in there, plasters and ointment an’ a wee pair of scissors.”
He takes the proffered paper bag and holds it as if he still doesn’t understand. She slides the shoulder bag off with a muffled jingle and puts it on the chair. “I’ll light the fire, okay?”
Augustus is very close to leaping up and physically forcing her out the door. He’s ahead of it, whatever this is, whoever’s sent her in with whatever craziness he’s supposed to latch onto. Get up and frighten her away. But his legs are empty. One or two neural detonations like very distant fireworks.
“I don’t need any help,” he says. “Please.”
“Okay, sorry. I’ll light this and go. You’ve got to keep warm if nothing else.”
He decides to accept this since it means only a few minutes. The wounds are hot. In fact a body alarm’s been ringing for some time: infection. He’ll have to deal with it. All these accumulating inconveniences like planes stac
king over a blocked airport.
“How come you’re here, anyway?” she asks.
“I live here.”
“I know but how come?”
He doesn’t answer. Rain starts to fleck the windows.
“Oh, right. None of my beeswax.”
He sinks deep into watching her at the fireplace. She snaps already small enough bits of kindling he thinks for the pleasure of the sound and feel. Two split logs tilted one against the other and twists of newspaper that leave print on her fingers. All done with glazed prehistoric concentration. Purple throwaway cigarette lighter, shick, shick, then the room’s gathered molecular reverence as the first flame catches, shivers up the newspaper, buckles, limbos at the kindling then with a crack unlocks itself and in two seconds has the whole brittle nest burning bright yellow and orange. She moves from her haunches onto her knees though the floor’s dirty, stretches her hands out to warm them. He thinks: one of the last old magics. She stares, emptied. He closes his eyes.
When he opens them she’s at the half-open door with her back to him and the gun hanging from her hand. Outside it’s completely dark, still raining.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
She starts—then freezes. Firelight plays on the leather jacket’s fractured back, makes him think of shields hung in a medieval banquet hall. He can’t believe he fell asleep. He feels refreshed but the two injuries are filled with cellular gossip.
“Take your finger off the trigger and turn around slowly.” He speaks as if he’s the one with the weapon, it’s so obvious she’s terrified. “Don’t panic. Just turn around slowly. It’s okay.”
She lowers her shoulders and turns around. Her eyes are wide, her mouth slightly open.
“Take your finger out of the trigger guard. Just hold it by the barrel and put it on the floor. Pointing away. I don’t want it to go off, that’s all.”
“I’ve no touched your wallet,” she says. “Honest to God I’ve no touched your wallet.”